Forms of Imprisonment
by Heist
Summary: The Labyrinth has fallen, betrayed from within. All the Resistance needs is the king's death to take it back. Too bad, then, that their chosen assassin is having strange dreams about a girl named Sarah...
1. death by inches

**foi; forms of imprisonment  
**a fanfiction by heist

**o0o**

**one. death by inches**

Sarey ghosted through the halls, her steps the barest whisper on the stone floors. She twisted through the dancing shadows cast by the spare lit torches, carefully, so carefully, watching for the Night Guard and encountering none.

It should not have been this easy. Their intelligencers had reported that the castle shifted as regularly as the Labyrinth surrounding it, that it was zealous in its defense of the king. The Night Guard was known to be a legion of monsters and ghasts, shadow-shifters and killing tracers, all but invisible until they unsheathed their black knives and brought death to whosoever dared the castle. By rights, Sarey shouldn't have been able to enter the castle at all, and every attempt preceding this one had met failure well before the gates.

The Labyrinth had been silent tonight. It happened, every now and again, that the great maze would still and the growling of its hungry passages would abate for an hour or two. Sarey had taken the opportunity to chance the gates, and met no opposition there. The castle seemed to slumber as well, but Sarey knew better than most that things were never only as they seemed. For all she knew, this could all be a trick by the Night Guard to strike at the Resistance, but by the Labyrinth Under she would do all the damage she could before they got to her.

She found some small trouble at the hidden stairs up from the city, but a few quick pricks of her claws solved the problem directly. Of all the Surrendered in the Resistance, the Change had been kindest to Sarey, and she took full advantage of her Labyrinth-inherited gifts. The poison claws and enhanced vision were a boon in spycraft and reconnaissance, and if the green-touched skin and fairy-sharp teeth helped her blend in better with the High Goblin halfbreeds of the city so much the better. No one save the Night Guard spared her a second glance, but the fractions of a heartbeat between the first glance and the following was all she needed to dispatch her enemies.

At last, Sarey reached the King's Hall. She hesitated only a moment, and told herself it was caution that stayed her rather than fear. They had worked too hard for this all to come to nothing now, and if she was killed by a Night Guard she didn't see coming the Resistance wouldn't have another chance. She searched the shadows with her eyes for the shape or shade of a hidden Night Guard and espied nothing.

So the rumors were true, then, and the king really did ban the Night Guard from watching his sleep. Damned foolish of him, really.

Assured she wouldn't fall dead before her goal, Sarey crept down the King's Hall, to the grand doors carved with an owl and the king's insignia. The Resistance had a few inside contacts among the castle's servants, and during the day while the king was surrounded by protectors they made sure to keep the bedchamber door's hinges well-oiled. If all went well the king would die without ever having even the slightest idea she had come.

The door was heavier than Sarey expected, and she had to round it fast to catch it before it met the wall. The room almost seemed to exhale as she eased the door closed again, and she leaned back against the heavy wood for a moment. It was time. She unsheathed her black knife, stolen from a too-slow Night Guard, and approached the bed.

The moon hung full and heavy over the Labyrinth, and its light streamed gently through the open windows and the sheer airy curtains surrounding the bed. More the fool he, the king left his windows open at night. The reports hadn't mentioned that, or she would have scaled the castle wall directly. Oh well, and no matter now.

Sarey pushed aside the curtain and raised her knife. The king shifted in his sleep, and she froze.

No mere halfbreed, the king's every perfect aristocratic feature was pure High Goblin. The moonlight carved his sharp cheekbones in even starker relief and made the dark streaks of color in his pale unruly hair shimmer. Those darker locks would be sky and midnight blue in the sunlight, she knew, and she watched as his brow creased in his sleep and a frown quirked on his lips, his expression of curiosity and frustration intermingled. Awake, his amber and sapphire eyes would reveal more, ever transparent windows to his true feelings.

Sarey shouldn't have known that. She'd never before seen the Goblin King, but his face and form were more familiar to her than her own. She'd dreamt him nightly for years.

Unbidden, a word came to her lips, and she was too slow to stay its escape. "_Jareth_."

The king's eyes snapped open and he bolted upright into wakefulness. His hair fell loose and trailed down his bare chest as he snapped into a defensive crouch, arms outstretched to defend and attack at once. She was surprised to notice his long pale fingers ended in claws like hers. In her dreams, he always wore gloves.

The king bared his teeth and snarled at her. She took a step back from the force of his anger, and his expression changed to one of shock. "_Sarah_?" he breathed.

The black knife slipped from her fingers, and she ran. She heard the ring of fairy steel rebound on the marble floor, and the king called out "Wait!"

Sarey dove out the open window and into the Labyrinth.

**o0o**

The war began years before Sarey's mother wished her away, years before the young starlet ever spied a handsome man named Rob Williams and considered the merits of taking him to bed. If not for her dreams, Sarey would never have known anything but war, for she had no doubts she would never live to see the end of this one.

Sarey took the most circuitous route back to the Resistance bolthole in the forest she could manage. On any good day, she could only double-back so many times before the Labyrinth lost patience and dropped her somewhere else in the kingdom, but tonight the maze was _furious_. Any pursuers she had would be every bit as hard-pressed as she to navigate the rapidly shifting Labyrinth, though that wasn't why she tarried.

She'd failed the Resistance. She had ruined possibly their only chance to strike back at the king who'd allowed the invasion of the Tuadi Baol, the Bright Ones, and their savage pets the _lilit, _the killers of the Desert and the source of the Night Guard. Sarey passed the broken siege walls that marked where the Labyrinth itself had intervened in the kingdom's defense and fallen; she could only hope she wouldn't bear the scars of her aborted attempt so openly.

Sarey passed the first line of invisible sentries without incident, but she felt the censuring stares of the forest around her, and she knew they knew of her failure. There would be an accounting, and a reckoning, but Sarey would have none of it tonight. She bypassed the usual entrance and headed straight for her small cell rather than the council hall, where the leaders of the Resistance would surely be waiting for her report.

She lit a candle and slung her cloak over the back of a chair. The empty dagger sheath formed any number of silent accusations as she unbuckled her belt, and Sarey wondered just what she would tell Wiseman and Lord Fox when the time came. They didn't know about the dreams. That she still had them, anyway.

She flopped onto her rickety bed and stared up at the patterns the flickering candlelight cast on her ceiling. Ten years ago, she'd dreamt of the Goblin King's defeat through six words. Wiseman had interpreted it as an omen, and the starving street urchin Sarey had been had no choice but to join the Resistance. It was a sign, she'd been told, a portent of the future, and when she defeated the king their glorious liberation would come at last.

In all that time, no one had inquired further about the dream, and Sarey hadn't been much inclined to share the details, or the fact that it was merely one in an endless sequence of dreams chronicling the life of someone she might have been had the circumstances only been a little different.

She was not Sarah Williams. She wasn't.

Sarah's mother didn't trade her child away to the Labyrinth in exchange for sure fame like Sarey's had, for starters. In a different life, Linda Carlisle accepted the consequences of her dalliance and married Rob Williams, at least for a little while, and Sarah grew up loved. Her young half-brother idolized her, and accepted the stories of being wished away with cheery skepticism rather than bitterness. Sarah's token dramas and teenaged tribulations were a sustaining amusement to Sarey as she grew up strange and nameless and unwanted on the City's streets.

Occasionally, Sarey wondered if in that other life, Sarah ever dreamed of being her. Unlikely. Sarah Williams believed in possibilities, and grand romance, and magic and wondrous things. Sarey believed in nothing, and so was never disappointed. She took what she could steal and gave freely of nothing, including her dreams. Those were hers, and hers alone, and only time was able to take those from her.

She rolled over and pressed her face into her hard lumpy pillow for a moment. Curse her still-mortal memory. She could remember only the faintest impressions of Sarah's first encounter with the Labyrinth and its king. Sarah had met the Goblin King only once, _ten years ago_, so Sarey could hardly be blamed for not recalling his every feature when Jareth reentered her dreamworld years later.

She would tell the Resistance the king had awakened early and startled her, Sarey decided. It wasn't a lie, if not the complete truth, and they would have to accept it. They would also have to accept that she wouldn't be the instrument of the king's demise. Perhaps it was a remnant of the sentimentalism she thought she'd purged years ago, but traitor to his people or no, Sarey had no intention of assassinating the man she dreamed of as a lover.

**o0o**

Sarey had known they wouldn't be pleased, but she didn't expect the entire council to attend her inquest. Lord Fox loomed tall over the head of the table, his Change extreme, but not enough to diminish his commanding stature. Sarey fully believed the rumors among the Resistance that he'd once been the king's general, many years ago. The story of how he lost his eye was legendary.

Wiseman held the corner of the table at Lord Fox's left hand, and the wizened tree-gnome drowsed through the meeting. White Ambrosius glared from Wiseman's side, and Sarey resisted the urge to flinch at the way his grimace was mirrored in the puckered white scar at his throat. At Lord Fox's right hand stood an empty chair for the Lost One, and Collector Mneme, Master Blauhande and the conjoined Doorholder twins sat to the left of that seat of honor. Of the council, only Ludovichk was not in attendance, and Sarey knew it was only because Stonebreaker was at work undercover in the castle's dungeons.

Lord Fox called her forward. "You have failed, Sarey."

"Yes, Lord Fox."

"This shall not be without repercussions."

"I understand, Lord Fox."

"Do you?" Lord Fox narrowed his lone black eye, and his tall vulpine ears flicked back in distaste for a moment. "The Goblin King saw your face."

"Yes, Lord Fox. Briefly."

"The king's memory is keener than steel. He knows you on sight, now, and if he decides upon reprisal you must know that the Resistance will not claim you, and you must not claim the Resistance."

"Understood, Lord Fox."

"If captured..."

"I acted on my own."

Lord Fox favored her with a long cool stare. Sarey resisted the urge to fidget, and at last he blinked. "I am pleased you understand my meaning. Excellent. You are dismissed."

Sarey relaxed, but Lord Fox wasn't quite finished. "I hope you also understand that it would be patently unwise to return to the capital for some time."

"I will take that under advisement, Lord Fox," Sarey said.

Lord Fox narrowed his eye. "Will you then."

Sarey shrugged. He knew as well as she did that she would take his advice and promptly do whatever she wanted afterwards, as she always had done. Lord Fox dismissed her again, and the council dispersed.

Sarey waited outside the council hall long after the end of the meeting for Wiseman to rouse and leave grumbling. She nodded at his departure, and ducked back into the hall. She strolled around the table, fingers trailing over the tops of the chairs, and she stopped at the Lost One's ever-vacant chair.

This was not the way the world was supposed to be.

She didn't know if Sarah's world was the best possible outcome either, but she preferred the dreams of a happily cursed Labyrinth over the kingdom of treachery and death she woke in. Sarah didn't have to walk in fear of the Tuadi Baol because the Bright Ones didn't dare tread in a land that was like to deform its denizens or drive them to madness, or both. Lord Fox was a small frenzied creature there, charmingly ineffective, and Ludovichk was a slow-minded monster.

Hoggle had been the same in both worlds, more or less. Sarey knew him as a distant figure in her childhood, and the bitter blustery dwarf hadn't much wanted anything to do with her, especially once it was clear her Change was content to make her look a proper born-Undergrounder. It took her a long time to realize he kept her at a distance because she _wasn't_ what she looked like, and to draw attention to her, Goblin or worse, would be disastrous.

He died bravely in a Night Guard raid when Sarey was still a child. The loss had been disastrous for the Resistance, and Hoggle wasn't the only casualty. Lord Fox had never been the same, and White Ambrosius had once been a laughing trickster sorceror. Not so, anymore.

Sarey couldn't honestly say she understood, though, until Sarah befriended Hoggle in her dreams. To have a true and steadfast friend, no matter how often he liked to pretend otherwise, was the greatest gift Sarey could have imagined, and even the possibility had been taken from her. If any one person or thing had been responsible, Sarey would have wreaked her frustrated vengeance, but her entire world had betrayed her. It wasn't _fair_.

Sarey left the council hall and returned to her room to make her plans. She had failed to kill the Goblin King, but she would not fail the Resistance again. There were other ways to bring a kingdom to its knees, after all.

**o0o**

**notes**: This is not the end, but this is by no means the beginning of an epic. **foi** is intended to be three chapters, no more, and I would like to finish the next installment before the new year. We shall see. Happy Midwinter Tree Festival, everyone.


	2. sweeping seasons

**foi; forms of imprisonment  
**a fanfiction by heist

**o0o**

**two. sweeping seasons**

"Are you awake?"

His breath ticked her ear and sent a pleasant shiver down her spine.

"Mmm." She smiled without opening her eyes, and snuggled deeper into the pillow and the warmth of his body. "Nope."

"Oh?" His mouth made acquaintances with the tender spot behind her ear, and she felt his lips curve into a smile on her skin. She shivered again, and he took advantage of the motion to turn her head and kiss her mouth. In her drowsy distraction, she didn't notice the way his hand migrated down to her hip, but she moaned in appreciation at the patterns his thumb played out.

He teased her bottom lip with his sharp teeth for a moment, and abruptly broke the kiss. His hand on her hip _moved_, and suddenly she was on her back, eyes open, and he was poised above her with the most wicked grin. "Jareth!" she gasped.

He recaptured her mouth for another scorching kiss, and his gloveless fingers quested for the hem of her nightshirt. She giggled into his mouth when the tips of his claws met buttons and hesitated. He sighed and leaned back on his heels, and she braced herself with her elbows and leaned forward with him. "Problems, love?"

"It is damned inconsiderate of you to not sleep naked like any other reasonable being," he said petulantly.

"Pardon me, Your Majesty, but we lesser mortals do get cold at night."

His lips quirked with the barest hint of a smile. "Excuses, excuses." He kissed the tip of her nose and made quick work of the buttons and the rest of the front of her shirt with his claws. "Now where were we?"

"I _liked_ that shirt."

"I'll get you a better one."

He silenced further protests with his mouth. She hadn't liked the shirt _that_ much anyway, and he _was_ vastly distracting.

Afterwards, sweaty and comfortably sated, she snuggled back into his chest. "Mmm."

"Indeed."

"Jareth? D'you think we—?"

"Soon." He skimmed his fingers down her back and kissed her eyelids. "It was certainly a pleasant diversion."

She chuckled. "That's one way of putting it."

"Yes. Awake now, beloved?"

Sarey opened her eyes, turned her head, and screamed into her pillow.

This was getting out of hand.

**o0o**

The Tuadi Baol were out in force in the city, and the _lilit_ Night Guard with them. Sarey could scarcely walk three steps through the market without having to dodge around one of the Bright Ones, and she made sure to keep her head down contritely whenever she wasn't able to dodge quickly enough. A man with fire-crimson hair and predatory gold eyes sneered down at her as she passed, and his personal _lilit_ snapped its slavering jaws and snarled at her.

She took extra care to bow away from him, and disappeared into the thick of the market crowds. Such was easier than usual, these days, and that, in addition to the increasing presence of the Bright Ones, was another thing to worry about.

The Labyrinth had gone mad. Its shifts and changes had ever been erratic, but now the Labyrinth's corridors and passages brought death to those who would trespass. Not even the native Goblinkin were safe, and no few children of the city had already been lost. Sarey grit her teeth in distaste at the thought; those poor souls had been thrown in by the Tuadi Baol, sacrifices to test the Labyrinth's sudden change in attitude. There was little consolation in the fact that dozens of the Tuadi Baol and hundreds of _lilit_ had perished first.

Sarey hadn't been back to the forest in weeks. The only ones the Labyrinth wasn't inclined to slay outright were the Surrendered, and any who tried to return were none-too-gently forced back into the city. She could only guess where the Resistance Council was in hiding, and she hadn't seen Lord Fox or any of the rest of them in days. The usual orders were to wait until she was contacted or the situation changed, but Sarey chafed from inaction.

She bought a wedge of bread and crumbling cheese from one of the market vendors, and chewed her dilemma over with her lunch. There had to be _something_ she could do. She was tired enough of making herself visible to her contacts and lying lazily about while the Tuadi Baol kidnapped and murdered the city's residents for sport. She was trained, and able, and damn it all but the Council still hadn't forgiven her for failing to murder the Goblin King.

In her distraction, Sarey bumped into a passerby and was knocked rudely back. She staggered briefly, tripped over an uneven cobble and fell back into the center of a group of _lilit_ and conversing Tuadi Baol. Her palms scraped against the rough stones of the street as she met the ground, and the circle of unforgiving Bright Ones and _lilit_ closed around her before she could scrabble away.

"Well, well, what is this then?" one of the Bright Ones said.

"An enterprising fool of a thief, perhaps, my lord Caelesh," another replied.

Sarey winced her eyes closed in dismay. She would interrupt a lordling's ramble through the city, of course. Someone ripped her hood back off her head, and she heard the hissing chortle that was the laughter of the _lilit_.

"If a thief, a pretty one," the lord said. Sarey dared to look up and spied steel-grey hair and sapphire-glinting eyes before he spoke again, his voice mellifluous and threatening together at once. "She'll do well, will she not?"

"Quite well, my lord Caelesh. Goblinkin are quite hale, and he ever did prefer dark-haired women. _Slaizse sers._"

Two of the _lilit_ lunged forward and seized her arms with their clammy grey claws, and Sarey screamed. Everyone in the Kingdom knew the Tuadi Baol kidnapped their concubines from the ranks of the city's daughters. It didn't matter whether one was High Goblin or halfbreed, the Bright Ones bred true, and she'd heard no few horror stories of the spells they cast to keep their broodmares quiet and compliant.

This couldn't happen to her!

The Resistance _wouldn't_ allow this to happen to her. She knew everything, identities, secrets, _everything_. A hooded creatures with eyes like burning coals stepped into the lordling's circle, and she renewed her struggles. She could see the crowds through the gaps in the circle as the creature began to speak, and Sarey searched for a familiar face, someone, anyone.

The Resistance couldn't allow this to happen. They'd kill her before it did, and she prayed for that small mercy as a burning trailed up her spine.

No one came, and the world went black.

**o0o**

_Once upon a time, there was a girl._

"I wish..."

_Wishes will out, we whisper together, and the wind will weave and the waters will wend and we will carve out a space in this, the meeting place. Dream, little girl, dream._

"More than anything, more than life."

_The king of the goblins has fallen in love with the girl, and he has given her certain powers._

"More than the moon."

_This is a dead land. It is not like this in the other kingdom. We dare not meet, save for in your dreams, and that is not enough to keep us alive._

"I wish..."

_This is the way the world ends. This is the way _our_ world ends._

"You're him, aren't you? You're the—"

_THINE IS THE KINGDOM._

_The truth hurts, little girl. Wake. Up._

**o0o**

She knew where she was before she even opened her eyes.

The trouble was, she didn't know whose life she was waking in.

She shifted, as if in a fitful sleep, and cracked one eye open against the pillow. Through her lashes, she saw every gradation and detail of the bounds between shadow and moonlight, and for a moment Sarey wished fiercely she hadn't wakened into her own world.

Sarey cast her limited gaze about the confines of the king's bedchamber. Beyond the bedcurtains, the black knife she'd thought lost lay waiting on the glass top of the bedside table, along with a slim red leather book and a pale feather. Further still, she spied the form of the Goblin King silhouetted against the moonlit night, shirt untucked and ungloved hands clasped behind his back.

Sarey turned her head against the pillow and drank in the sight of him. Even in his disarray, the king cut a commanding figure, and she'd dreamed enough of Sarah's life to have more than a passing familiarity with that same figure. She knew, inexorably, that he was waiting for something. There was a tension to the set of his shoulders, with just a hint of worry in the curling of his fingers. Were she Sarah, she'd rise from the bed and join him, wrap her arms around him and press herself to his back. Labyrinth Under help her, against all logic or sense and in defiance of the circumstances Sarey wanted to do exactly that.

Perhaps it was the change in her breathing or some other sense, but the Goblin King turned around and turned his luminous gaze on her, and Sarey realized she knew nothing about him whatsoever.

"Hello," the Goblin King said.

"I'm not her."

The king stiffened minutely, and Sarey could have sworn she saw the faintest expression of pity on his features. "I know," he said.

She sat upright, and in a flurry of motion seized the black knife and threw herself at the king. No matter that he looked the same, answered to the same name, as surely as she wasn't Sarah Williams the king wasn't the man in her dreams. She _could_ kill him and save their world still.

Her steps were sure, her reflexes honed for this moment, and she drew the black knife high to pierce his heart. And yet... half a breath from completion, the instant the knife touched the king's flesh something stayed her hand.

Sarey's fingers whitened around the hilt of the blade and her arm trembled, but the knife rested against the king's skin, glittering death promised and undelivered. She discarded the black knife and reached again with her claws, but though her fingertips lit on his chest she couldn't bring her claws to touch him.

The king never moved, and in the sad resignation on his face she knew it was no power of his that prevented her efforts. Sarey fought until her head ached and spots danced in her vision, and still not a drop of the king's blood fell. She couldn't hurt him, and she refused to understand why.

At last, the king opened his eyes, and ever so gently took her hands in his. "I'm surprised it took Lord Fox this long to act. I never suspected that he might send another in his place."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sarey said. "I acted on my own."

The king looked at her for a long time, predatory consideration staring out from sapphire and amber. "No. No you didn't." He dropped her hands, and Sarey reeled away from him as if burned.

"You don't know anything!"

"Nor do you. I gave the canny old fox that order decades ago, and that it was you to bring it to be..." The king looked away from her and perched in the windowsill. "The irony of it will kill me long before you ever do."

Sarey backed away, and took an uneasy seat on the edge of the bed. She didn't know what to do, or what there was she could do, but she didn't want to let the king out of her sight for even a moment. If he were any kind of smart at all, he would kill her and have done, if just as a mercy. She still had no idea what the Bright Ones had done to her, and a significant part of her didn't want to know.

After a long while, the king sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" she asked warily.

"It never occurred to me that you would be here, in the Labyrinth. I understood what the terms of my imprisonment would be when the Tuadi Baol came, but if I'd known... I believe I would have held the kingdom longer. For that, for you, I am sorry."

"I don't catch your meaning," Sarey said.

"Lord Fox kept his secrets too closely, it seems," the Goblin King replied. "I can't imagine he explained to you why the Resistance required me dead."

"How do you know that?" Sarey demanded.

"What did he tell you?"

Sarey set her shoulders and stared levelly at the king. He had betrayed their world to the Bright Ones. That alone was reason enough.

"You're stubborn. I'm not surprised." The king smiled without humor. "The maze must always have a master, else its darker soul would rise and run havoc. Those of my line have always ruled the Labyrinth, and if I died without issue all the Tuadi Baol in this world or any other would not be able to withstand its anger." His lips curved again, but not into anything that could pretend to be a smile. "They aren't fools, the Bright Ones. _He who holds the king holds the Labyrinth_, after all."

Sarey began to understand. "Then the Night Guard are..."

"My snarling jailers, yes. Aren't they _so_ charming."

Sarey nodded warily, not wanting to agree with him. If she agreed with him on one thing, she would agree with him on others, and she could not in good conscience do so.

The Goblin King studied her for a long time. "I am so sorry," he said again. "I've known about... _you_, for years. Before the Tuadi Baol came I knew, and after... I closed all the doors save one, but you were already _here_." His face was pained. "And now..."

"Now?" Sarey prompted.

"I'd been waiting for you to save my world," the king said.

He'd been waiting for her to save his world. He _had_ been waiting for her to save his world. He was no longer waiting, which meant... what? He wasn't waiting to be free himself, so...

"Why can't I kill you?"

The king cocked his head, and his eyes were thoughtful. "That is the question, isn't it? The Bright Ones have ever been free with their magic, and their curses. They knew I was searching for someone Above; they would never believe their luck if they knew."

He didn't have to name it for Sarey to understand that she was under a geas. Such things were unspeakable, for their horror, but everyone knew. "I suppose I should be grateful then, to still be of my right mind," she said.

The king shrugged. "It was not meant to be a kindness."

_Oh._

She took to her feet again and paced the walls. "So, what are the terms of my of _my_ imprisonment?"

"So far as I've come to understand from the others before you, you cannot leave my line of sight, nor bring me to bodily harm. Your life is tied to mine, so no harm should befall you so long as I remain hale." The king's voice was unflinchingly unfeeling, and she wondered at what cost he'd learned it all as she turned a corner of the expansive room.

"Hm. Is there any way to break it?" Sarey passed the king in her perambulation, and she felt him shiver in her wake.

"Only two. The cost of the first is a child."

Sarey froze. Of course it would be. It always was, where the Labyrinth was concerned. "In the other Labyrinth, _she_ and her king are trying to..."

"I know."

"Because he's not free either."

"No. No curse is strong enough to cross generations. An heir would free his people." There was so much he wasn't saying. Sarey turned to face him.

"What's the second?" she asked.

"Death. Though the first amounts to much the same thing. The Tuadi Baol would see me dead the second they had a replacement, and they would view your survival as trivial. The backlash would kill you as surely as anything."

Still so impassive, but his eyes would ever give him away. "Why do they hate you so?" she asked.

"The kingdom is fallen, not broken," the Goblin King said, and steel ran in his voice. "Everything the Bright Ones have, they have taken by force. I have given them nothing, and they know that I am not so powerless as they would wish to believe."

Sarey took a step forward, and another, and kissed him. The king was stiff in his surprise, but he kissed her back with fervor, and she welcomed him. He was familiar, yet not, and her instincts warred within her. He wasn't a traitor. He hadn't betrayed her. What that meant for the future was uncertain, but he wanted her, and she had always wanted to be wanted.

When their lips parted, she held his gaze in breathless silence until at last, he broke it.

"I know you aren't... _her_. What is your name in this world?"

"Sarey. My name is Sarey."

He mouthed her name a few times, as if tasting the fit of the word in his mouth. "Sarey. Almost the same, but different. _Sarey_... My name is—"

"Jareth. Your name is the same, but you _are_ different."

She kissed him again, and the conversation moved to the bed and continued in a different form. Afterwards, she watched him, and he her as they learned each other in different ways.

"I will find a way," he murmured to her skin.

She didn't love him. She didn't know if she could. "We will," she murmured back. If she couldn't leave him, he would simply have to come with her.

Sarey sighed for her silent plans, and slept, and _dreamed_.

**o0o**

_Rest for now, little girl. We'll be offering when you wake._

"Goodnight, Sarah."

"Goodnight, Jareth."

_Don't let this come to nothing_.

**o0o**

**notes**: Yes, that was parallelism there. And that was a Sondheim reference, and that one was _The Hollow Men_, and a smidgeon of _costanza_, too, for atmosphere. And the fact that this whole thing is a giant roiling cauldron of _something_ that's pretty obvious if you look at it the right way.

Obviously, I didn't finish before New Year's. Life got in the way, but **foi** is at the top of my creative priorities list again. For the moment. We shall see if this new thing pans out.


End file.
